“Miss” and “Sir” in schools

[MyCleverGrayBear]

Been to lots of secondary school open days recently. At the state secondaries the children showing parents around etc called the teachers “Sir” and “Miss”. Is that normal? I haven’t heard this IRL ever.

(To be clear, “Miss, this parent wants to know about languages at school” vs “Mrs Jones, this parent would like to see the sports centre”. But also in a couple of classrooms there were children constantly saying “Miss, look at this, Miss, I’ve out the sign up, Miss, shall I stand here” etc and it was incredibly grating.)

And why are female teachers “Miss” and make teachers “Sir”? I felt like I was in a bad 80’s Grange Hill episode and Benny Hill was about to run in and chase me 🫣

Miss is short for mistress

Sir is as per the armed forces and other hierarchical systems

it has NOTHING to do with peerages

Thank you for worrying on my behalf.

It sounded so lazy.

It probably is. However , they get used to doing it in primary when they're a lot younger , needier and might struggle with some surnames.

Tbf, I'm an adult and even I do it sometimes if I'm in a rush or having a brain freeze.

I also get the opposite sometimes, kids calling me Mrs X when I'm a miss , and sometimes mangling up my name(not deliberately).

Yes. This thread demonstrated that it is only me who finds this unusual. That’s exactly right 🫣

I used to constantly say" I have the joy of a husband " when called Miss. They all do it !

In my son's secondary school, even the teachers refer to "Sir" or "Miss" when talking to the students and sometimes each other in front of students (which I thought was really bizarre)

Well thanks all. Seems it’s fairly usual but not universal. And mainly a state school thing.

Im glad others can see why j might find it problematic. I don’t expect anyone to understand quite why it grated so much for me.

I also get called mum, nan, sibling/aunt name or even dad a few times.

Brain just on autopilot, rather than" hmpf look at this lowly woman she's not worthy of anything more than a miss."

Well we use their first names here and no-one has self combusted. I have yet to see how using a surname or sir teach respect.

My local secondary manages to do this whilst embedding mutual respect. The teachers also share their real life, their previous careers, their hobbies etc. 🤷‍♀️

It really isn't a 'state school thing' and I don't know where you got this idea from.

Is this just another one of those tedious threads?

I did not go go school in the UK.

But I have DC in secondary school here and I always have thought it's very, very odd. If you are going to call male teachers 'Sir', surely you should call female teachers 'Madam'.

Totally normal. The kids are going from having to remember one teachers name to remembering several names on top of being in a new environment, moving rooms and learning the timetable.
Much easier to just say Miss or Sir.

a) It happens in public, private, state and special schools

b) "Miss" comes from Mistress comes from school mistress - leader of a school

c) "Sir" is the standard term for those of a higher rank in all armed forces and emergency services - it has NOTHING to do with peerages

Work in a secondary school and have worked in others. Yes it is always ‘Miss’ and ‘Sir’ and the staff generally refer to themselves in the same way way I.e ‘Miss could you help so and do?’ Or ‘Sir could you call a member of SLT please?’. Even ‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’ when you pass in the corridor unless of course you are friends.

But situations move very fast with students getting upset, first aid situations, lots of students around and you can’t use first names so this stops things slipping and gives you time to think about what is going on rather than names.There are loads of different teachers, new ones every year, supply teachers etc in big schools so remembering the name of everyone is hard for teachers and pupils. I have been called Mum too but I find it respectful to be called ‘Miss’, I don’t want to be a Mrs again anyway IRL(outside school) and IRL when a student calls you Miss when out and about it shows respect to me.

Never really thought about the Miss vs Sir thing. What else could a female teacher be called? Mrs?

when I was at school in the 90s and 00s, the only teacher who had a PhD was addressed as “Doc”

Entirely normal, as far as I know always has been.

Madam or ma’am it seems. Both of which I think sound awful. I’m sure had we been made to say Madam we’d have been calling them Modom behind their backs, which used to be a common posh mock of that title.

Well, no. We had a couple of (female) teachers with PhDs who insisted on being called Ma'am if we were using a shortened title. (So, eg, "Doctor Jones, can you look at my work please?" but "yes Ma'am" when answering the register).

No idea what male teachers with a PhD would have wanted to be called, as there weren't any at my school. This was in the late 90s/early 00s.

Completely normal to be Miss. I have a Doctorate but I'm Miss in school.

The only school I've not heard children call their teachers Miss and Sir was my own childhood school, where it was Sir and Ma'am, or Mr/Mrs Surname.

I got around the thorny issue issue of how to address a teacher by never voluntarily speaking to them, and only responding if I absolutely had to. Surely I can't be the only one.

Miss, sir, mum, dad..... I've been called the lot. I draw the line at 'that fucking bitch' or 'cunt'.

I get the linguistic issues with it, but the kids generally don't see it. 'Miss' just denotes female teacher to them. They certainly don't appear to have any more respect for the 'sirs'

When and where did you go to school that you didn't realise this was the norm?

I agree about Miss. It could easily be Madam instead.

At my children's State secondary school they use Sir and Madam!

I was looking up the history of this the other day, by the way, and basically it's because Mrs and Miss are both shortened versions of Mistress (which is why married female teachers are Miss too, and not Mrs).

Yes that's been our experience here in the US. I quite like that the term "ma'am" is so normal here.

I did find it interesting that it's the default for female teachers to be referred to as Ms Smith rather than Miss Smith or Mrs Smith, at least at my kids' US schools.

After I moved away from the UK I started to find it very strange to hear female teachers referred to as 'Miss', even though it's how I was raised to refer to them. Sometimes you have to leave a place before you can stop and think about things that formerly you thought of as totally normal.